Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, October 21, 1995 TAG: 9510230033
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LAURENCE HAMMACK AND DIANE STRUZZI STAFF WRITERS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Forty-eight hours before Mack killed his ex-girlfriend and then himself, a Roanoke prosecutor had asked a judge to lock him up.
In the past two weeks, Mack had been charged with stalking, assaulting and trying to abduct his estranged girlfriend, Alesha Johnson, 21. Soon afterward, court records say, he turned his anger on a man she was dating, kicking dents in his car and later firing shots at him.
On Tuesday morning, Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney Alice Ekirch asked a judge to revoke Mack's bond, based on the more recent charges filed by Johnson's boyfriend. Ekirch said she believed Mack to be a threat.
Roanoke General District Judge William Broadhurst denied the request, telling Ekirch to file a written motion. Broadhurst scheduled a hearing on the matter for Friday morning.
By then, both Johnson and Mack were dead.
Authorities believe that Mack, 26, shot and killed Johnson near the Valleypointe Corporate Center in Roanoke County on Thursday afternoon, then turned the 9-mm handgun on himself a short time later near his sister's home on Hanover Avenue Northwest.
The case raises questions about whether Mack should have been allowed to remain free for so long. Magistrates had released him repeatedly over the past two weeks on unsecured bonds, which did not require him to post any money.
But both a prosecutor and a defense lawyer declined Friday to second-guess the system, saying that there was little evidence to suggest Mack was a deadly threat until it was too late.
"I guess the lesson is there's no way to tell where the real danger is," Chief Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney Betty Jo Anthony said. "We have such a high incidence of what would be domestic or quasi-domestic threats of violence. You can't lock up every person."
While the string of charges that Mack had accumulated in the past month was "unsettling," Anthony said there was nothing in his record to indicate he was any more dangerous than the hundreds of other men charged every year in domestic disputes.
"I don't think anybody could have guessed that this would be the guy who killed this woman," she said.
Sharon Chickering, a Roanoke lawyer who has been on both sides of domestic cases, agreed that the courts are powerless to stop people who are determined to kill - short of putting them in jail.
"Some judges are more ready to throw people in jail," she said. "But judges are people just like us and it's hard to tell which [defendants] have the capacity" to kill.
In the past two weeks, court records show that Mack's behavior went from volatile to violent as his arrest warrants piled up.
On Oct. 7, he was charged with attempted abduction and assault and battery. "He chased me around Ferncliff apartments and down to Hardee's, harassing me," Johnson said in a written complaint filed in Roanoke Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court.
After she fled into a convenience store to call police, Johnson wrote, Mack "threw me out the store and into the back seat of his car, where he tried to lock me in."
Mack was arrested after police arrived, and a magistrate released him on an unsecured bond. When he failed to appear for an arraignment two days later, a judge issued a warrant for his arrest.
By the time police caught up with Mack, he was also wanted on a stalking charge. Johnson wrote in a second complaint filed Oct. 15 that Mack would not stay away from Ferncliff, even though he was barred from the complex.
"He continues to come on the premises and knocks on my apartment door and follows me everytime I leave the apartment," Johnson wrote.
Despite his previous charge of failing to appear in court, a magistrate released Mack again. He was scheduled to appear in domestic court Dec. 19 for a hearing on the abduction, assault and stalking charges.
Neither Chief Magistrate Robert Casey nor Broadhurst could be reached for comment.
Mack's sister, Dorothy Mack, believes court records tell only half the story.
"When he met this woman he started going downhill," she said. "He was mad about her using his money ... and that she was sneaking around with another guy. He found out about it and he just flipped."
Johnson "hurt him deeply and it cut him like a knife," she said.
Johnson's family members declined comment.
Friday afternoon the medical examiner's office completed autopsies on Johnson and Mack, who both died from gunshot wounds. Johnson had been shot several times in the chest and abdomen. Mack died by a single gunshot wound to the head.
Police are unsure exactly what happened in the hours before Johnson's body was found in a grassy area off of Peters Creek Road on Thursday night.
Dorothy Mack said she saw her brother driving on Orange Avenue late Thursday afternoon. He was shirtless and oblivious to the rush-hour traffic.
"I said, 'There's Larry. Look, he's not looking over here,'" Dorothy Mack remembered. "I'm waving. I blew my horn."
Larry Mack finally acknowledged his sister and drove to her Northwest house. When he got there he could barely talk, she said.
"He looked like death was on his face," she said. "He said he shot Lesha. I said, 'Where is she? I've got to call police and get some help.' He said, `I don't think you can help her; she's dead.'''
Mack said her brother finally told her where Johnson had been shot. Then he walked outside, threatened to kill himself and drove away.
"I saw him coming back around the house," Mack said. "I heard a shot. I heard him holler."
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